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OpenAI shuts down the Sora Videos API and all model aliases, with no replacement in the developer roadmap

· by Pondero Newsdesk

The short version

OpenAI's Videos API and five Sora 2 model aliases reached end-of-life on September 24, 2026. API calls now return errors, and the deprecations page lists no recommended replacement.

OpenAI shuts down the Sora Videos API and all model aliases, with no replacement in the developer roadmap

All API calls to OpenAI's Sora video generation models began returning errors on September 24, 2026. The shutdown closes a six-month migration window and leaves no official video generation endpoint in the OpenAI developer platform.

What

OpenAI's shutdown ran in two stages. The company announced the deprecation on March 24, 2026, applying the standard six-month notice period it uses for generally available models, per the OpenAI deprecations page. The Sora web and iOS app closed on April 26, 2026, cutting consumer access first. The Videos API and five model aliases reached end-of-life on September 24: sora-2, sora-2-pro, sora-2-2025-10-06, sora-2-2025-12-08, and sora-2-pro-2025-10-06 are all retired. The deprecations page lists no recommended replacement for any of them.

The Sora 2 video and audio generation capability remains available inside the ChatGPT paywall, but there is no programmatic equivalent through the OpenAI API. Per the deprecations page, a migration path was not included in the shutdown notice.

Sora API calls have stopped working

Any production workflow that calls the Videos API or a Sora model alias stopped working on September 24. Teams with active integrations need to point those calls at a third-party video generation API. The closest alternatives with current API availability include Runway (Gen-4 Turbo), Kling (v2 Pro), and Seedance. None are drop-in replacements: pricing structures, prompt formats, and resolution options differ from the Sora 2 spec. For enterprise teams on managed OpenAI contracts, the absence of a recommended migration path in the official documentation is the practical gap. The support burden lands on the developer.

The shutdown also makes OpenAI's current priorities concrete. Per The Decoder, OpenAI is redirecting compute toward enterprise coding tools and a super app combining ChatGPT capabilities into a single product, per The Decoder's shutdown coverage. Video generation did not make the cut.

Context

Sora launched in invite-only access in September 2025. By November 2025, the iOS and Android apps reached approximately 3.3 million downloads, per TechCrunch's March 24 coverage. Downloads fell to 1.1 million by February 2026. Total in-app revenue from the consumer product reached roughly $2.1 million, a thin return on a compute-intensive service. A reported $1 billion Disney licensing agreement that would have used Sora for content production collapsed alongside the shutdown announcement.

Inside OpenAI, Sora continues as an internal research project focused on world models, with stated ambitions toward modeling the physical world rather than running a consumer video social feed. The consumer and developer products shut down; the research thread did not.

What to watch next

OpenAI has not announced a video generation replacement for the developer platform. Whether the company ships a new video endpoint at a fall 2026 product event, and whether enterprise customers that built Sora workflows publicly disclose their migration costs, are the two signals worth tracking.

Sources